Stages are designed for a wide variety of applications including, for example, smaller one-step platforms and large risers for auditorium seating applications. Generally, the manufacture, or design, of these stages can be broken down into two categories: fixed and portable. A fixed stage is designed and/or installed for permanency; once installed, there are typically no expectations that the stage is to disassembled or moved. For the portable stage market, however, a good design is typically one that can be assembled, disassembled, expanded (or configured) and reconfigured, easily accessed for repair and movable. The market typically demands that portable stages be easily assembled and disassembled and sufficiently lightweight for moving. For both the fixed and portable stage market, a quality stage is durable for decades of heavy traffic while remaining structurally sound.
In either the fixed or portable markets, reducing the size and weight of each part used in a quality stage can be important for addressing most all of the above-mentioned features of the stage. Minimizing the amount of material used to build the stage can also serve to lessen the overall weight of the stage as well as both labor (e.g., for assembly) and material costs.
For some applications where the portability feature is used relatively frequently, ease of set up and take down can be a priority. Without the ability to easily and quickly be set up and taken down, a stage can lose its versatile character. For example, in certain applications where a stage is expected to be moved only 2-3 times over a given span of time, the labor costs associated with the disassembly and reassembly of the stage can exceed the depreciation-adjusted cost of a new stage when that time span lapses, and the value of the stage's portability can be negated.
A fixed stage benefits from the above-mentioned features in various ways as well. For example, even though reassembly is not expected to occur, if not designed properly, a fixed stage design may require heavy equipment and the associated expensive costs of assembly; thereby driving up the costs for initially assembling the stage. Lightweight fixed-stage components allow for ease of movement which is less rigorous work during the initial stage construction. Simple, lightweight-component construction makes a stage more marketable in view of the less-intensive training needed for the labor to build the stage. Although a fixed stage is intended to remain intact for a period of time, the inevitable discarding of the stage is facilitated by these same features that serve the portable stage market. Moreover, like portable stages, fixed stages become damaged and therefore should be designed with varying degrees of component access for maintenance and repair purposes.
In view of the above, there have been various attempts to provide stage systems and components that attempt to address all of the above features. For a variety of reasons, however, these stage systems and components fail to sufficiently address these above-discussed, and other market-demanded features.